Mizbalaare a unique ad agency in the Israeli landscape, for many reasons. Guy and Dori are doing an amazing and innovative work and they’ve turned their little ad agency to a major force in the local and global scene.
Earlier this week Mizbala launched ‘Raise Your Voice‘, the first interactive petition to promote COP15 – the climate change summit, to be held in Copenhagen on Dec. 7th – probably the most important climate change conference of our decade. In the video each viewer can add his/her own input, thus showing their involvement and joining the voices around the world urging global leaders to take action. Start now and Raise Your Voice.
Started another army reserve duty this week, and I have to ‘thank’ technology for keeping me updated with the world. My DELL XPS and Cellcom HSPA USB Modem are keeping me connected about once a day, with quick ‘refresh’ intervals on my Nokia N95 – I have both my private and work email, as well as twitter, all hooked up in a single device. I’ve written before why the N95 is one of the best smart-phones available today, even without the touchscreen.. still holds.
In any case, I have lots of stuff to do, and little time to complete them, so I’ll leave you with this Geri Halliwell song – fits the current weather conditions we’re experiencing here. Enjoy!
Frank D’Angelo was an MCI account guy at MVBMS, and was assigned by his boss, Bob Schmetterer, to develop something called ‘a graphical ad unit’ for HotWired, a popular online digital magazine (spin-off of Wired Magazine). He shares his story with AdAge readers, a story that changed digital advertising forever.
Just returned from a very unique gathering, held by IBM HRL (Haifa Research Labs) and IBM GTU (Global Technology Unit). The 2 divisions teamed up and invited local bloggers (~25) to an evening of technology and innovation, coupled with food & wine of course. The purpose of the event was to expose some of the work HRL researchers are doing at the various locations in Israel and what applications and services have been deployed internally, towards a future IBM Product or Service.
Coming from Big Blue I was no stranger to the innovativethinking and the endless possibilities HRL researchers posses. No wonder IBM invests $6B annually in R&D. The presentations were more like short pitches, 10-15min each, covering 3 topics:
Do smarter people make smarter search engines?
Is it all about context?
Shouldn’t non-techies be able to create online applications?
The crowd was very involved in the pitch, questioning possible applications and services, how metadata is gathered and filtered, and more. As a research facility, HRL are quite lucky to have a testing population of some 350,000 employees – which definitely helps shorten development cycles.Obviously I felt a strong connection to the 1st topic, being an advocate for corporate collaboration and knowledge management (E2.0). I think my 1,000+ social bookmarks are still part of IBM’s internal knowledge base (Dogear), available at the company’s intranet (w3).
In short, great event, interesting discussions and awesome people to brainstorm with.
That is, in a nutshell, what Bezeq International, an Israeli ISP, is offering to its customers. In a closed event for bloggers and tweeple held this week, the company CIO presented the new package – PrivateNGN – the first of its kind in Israel. The idea is very simple: Customers with a bandwidth of 10MB and above (consumers, not businesses) will enjoy a dedicated server to tunnel their requests, unique IP address and their very own VIP call-center.
Broadband internet penetration rates in Israel have increased dramatically over the past 7 years, from 4% in 2002 to a whopping 76% in 2008 (PDF, Hebrew), with an average bandwidth of 2.5MB compared to 500Kb in 2002. There are 2 infrastructure providers (ADSL or Cable) and over half a dozen ISP providers – conditions that create a highly competitive market, and each ISP is working hard to get the competitive advantage.
Following the semi-technical presentation (that was very easy to understand – lots of graphs and logos), the Marketing Manager took the stage, showing us the campaign surrounding the launch, the design language and the brand new TV spot – first screening ever (was aired later that evening on TV).
To wrap the event, and staying true to the language of PrivateNGN, Bezeq Intl. got us flying!! Well, not exactly flying, but I did complete several summer-salts while suspended above ground. On the other hand, London 2012 is out of the question, but I’m practicing for Rio 2016!!
I am interested in seeing how the other ISPs will respond to Bezeq Intl. announcement, as it changes the broadband market and definitely puts Bezeq Intl. in a better position to increase sales and customer base. From the social media aspect – excellent initiative!! More and more companies are realizing the potential of the social scene, by starting (and continuing) a conversation online, adding social media aspects to their marketing programs, inviting bloggers to press events, holding closed events for bloggers and tweeple – well done Bezeq Intl.!
This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5eba7a87-0136-48b1-94ce-072623ad1ef3)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=153f9cce-7963-46d3-9472-f391b8ac2f08)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=aa403c5c-9ae7-4177-a446-30e4afc24723)
